Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Insight Innovation Exchange conference in Philadelphia. There were many vendors that offered solutions to many common challenges that market researchers face. One common theme I noticed was the challenge for market researchers to make sense of big data. Yes, big data has become something of a buzzword, but consumers are creating a lot more data and market researchers can thrive if they embrace it.

For some time now, Forrester has been writing about the importance of incorporating behavioral tracking insights to marketer researchers’ research mix. Don’t get me wrong — survey research is and will continue to be incredibly important for companies to gain insights on consumers. A survey can capture a variety of consumer behaviors, sentiments, and attitudes. In one survey, marketers can assess their market share and find out the profile of their customers and what they want. And survey research can help provide insight into the “why” — the reasoning behind the choices that consumers make — something that is not possible with behavioral data. However, survey research cannot detail granular activities due to respondent recall. Enter big data, and with it many possibilities for behavioral tracking. Yes, this is nothing new for customer intelligence professionals, who analyze customer transactions, online web tracking, and other consumer behaviors. But by combining survey and behavioral data, marketers get the best of both worlds: They get consumer profiles and psychographics, brand health metrics, and a detailed record of the actions that those consumers actually do.